Countrywide Property Lawyers replaces failed outsourced IT project with Progress®-based Visualfiles application rolled out in rapid time.

Extensive stress testing of Visualfiles and the Progress database confirm scalability and high level performance.

Slough — 19 Jun 2006 — Countrywide Property Lawyers, the UK's largest conveyancer, has gone live, following a swift five month implementation, with the Visualfiles case management and business process automation system, which is built on the Progress OpenEdge® platform, by Leeds-based, Progress Software application partner, Visualfiles. The application replaces the bespoke software and outsourced IT project which ran aground last year, following a multi-million pound investment with one the world's largest IT services providers. The Microsoft SQL Server project failed to deliver CPL's required levels of scalability, capacity and client service and held back business growth. CPL now expects payback from the new £850,000 software investment within the first twelve months.

CPL provides conveyancing services to nearly 1100 estate agencies owned by Countrywide plc, including Bairstow Eves, rightmove – the web-based estate agency in which Countrywide has a 25 per cent ownership and over 50 other autonomous subsidiaries. Through its other divisions Countrywide plc provides financial, surveying and valuation services.

From a standing start in 1997, CPL was established to maximise the significant opportunities for conveyancing generated by these other divisions, and is now a £22 million business and the largest conveyancer in Europe.

In 1999, Visualfiles' SolCase v5 system was selected to provide case management and installed at five centres, which were not connected. Two years of rapid growth ensued and CPL re-examined its systems requirements in order to improve productivity with document scanning, electronic management and automated workflows. A review of the legal software marketplace drew a blank and CPL engaged one of Europe's largest IT services companies to develop a bespoke application and provide an outsourced hardware and systems infrastructure.

The critical drivers for success were to increase capability, capacity, scalability and productivity especially to prepare for new initiatives in the market such as the Home Information Pack and government-backed e-conveyancing.

CPL took delivery of the bespoke application, known internally as Fusion, in 2003. By 2005 the original SolCase v5 application was still supporting 70 per cent of the business and Fusion was handling less than 3000 cases and only 200 users out of a potential for 500. In February 2005, CPL realised that the system could not cope operationally and that the critical investment driver to allow for considerable business expansion would not be met. Visualfiles, the replacement for SolCase was now well-established in the market and included the features that had been missing in its predecessor.

Visualfiles offered to work alongside CPL, together with Progress Software, to stress test the application and database. The latest version of Visualfiles had now been re-developed with Progress OpenEdge to separate the business logic from the underlying user interface, database and IT platform and work with an entity relationship, rather than a linear, database model. Together these attributes future-proof the application and improve scalability.

Extensive stress testing using real-life CPL transaction examples on the Visualfiles application and the underlying Progress database were carried out last August, using the facilities of managed services provider, 7Global. The results were impressive showing no degradation of response times or processing performance even with a load of 700 users accessing over 2300 transactions.

Terry Marris and CPL came to a simple conclusion: "Because we identified that Fusion would not scale to the number of users without a complete re-build of the application and SQL Server database we saw that the Visualfiles alternative would be a lot less expensive with more guarantee of success. The stress testing scalability results reinforced our confidence in the product and we felt very comfortable with the potential of the application."

The implementation of Visualfiles started in November 2005 going live with all new business in March 2006. CPL also plans to launch a new conveyancing milestones web service to clients in June. Visualfiles has developed the web site with database accessibility using Progress WebSpeed®, so clients can view the real-time status of 35 progress milestones.

CPL's goal is to push Visualfiles' capability to the maximum and to increase capacity within three years to 30,000 active cases at any one time - a level of business growth which CPL can justify from the potential in the market.

"We feel comfortable that Visualfiles has the capacity to scale and improve the productivity and cost-effectiveness of our resources and give us the capacity to meet a trebling of active cases over the next three years," said Terry Marris. "We are now well-equipped to meet future developments or changes in the industry because of Visualfiles' Progress-based future-proof design. If we achieve our objectives we will receive a return on the investment in less than one year."

About Progress Software

The Progress Company is a global supplier of software and services that simplify the development, deployment, integration, and management of business applications. The Progress OpenEdge platform, with the industry's leading embedded database, delivers lowest cost-of-ownership applications that are rapidly implemented and easily integrated with other enterprise, extended enterprise and Internet applications.

With the expertise of more than 2000 independent software vendors (ISVs), and application service providers (ASPs), the Progress Company and its application partners supply more than $5 billion annually in Progress technology, Progress®-based applications, and related services. Progress customers span 50,000 organisations in more than 120 countries including 70 percent of the Fortune 100. The Progress Company, and Sonic Software are operating companies of Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS). Sonic Software designs and develops the Sonic range of products in the USA. In Europe, they are distributed by Progress Software. The Progress Company, an operating unit of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), is headquartered in Bedford, Mass., and can be reached in the UK at 01753 216300 or on the web at www.progress.com.

Progress, OpenEdge, Progress OpenEdge and WebSpeed are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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